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I've read where C-Dilla actually disables your CD burner on occassion when its copy protection routine kicks in and thinks you're burning pirated software

As long as it knows its victim is pirating software, I've no problem with that. However, I do -- as much as possible -- burn a single working copy of my kids' games CDs. I give it to them, and I stash the original away for safekeeping, in case they should mishandle and damage the working copy. It hasn't happened yet, but I refuse to lose software I paid for, due to mishandling the CD. If that violates the license agreement, so be it.

I'd guess the popular spyware spies -- AdAware is the one I can think of at the moment; supposedly, there's a better one -- will find and kill C-Dilla.

I've read where C-Dilla actually disables your CD burner on occassion when its copy protection routine kicks in and thinks you're burning pirated software--not just TurboTax.

Macrovision Offers Closer Look At SafeCast/C-Dilla

"One of the criticisms of the SafeCast/C-Dilla software is that it somehow disables CD burners, preventing CDs protected with the SafeCast software to be copied. This claim is false, Glass said. Burning the protected CD doesn't work because the software sends certain commands which can only be interpreted by "master" CD burners at mass duplication factories, he said.

Does anyone know exactly what that means? I sure don't. And I don't want any spyware to send any supposedly harmless commands to my burner ever. My burner should only receive commands from software that I have installed for burning.

I don't think anyone has yet provided a thorough answer to whether and to what extent CD-burning may be affected but C-Dilla's SafeDisc technology certainly makes this easy to include. I certainly wouldn't rule it out. There's a lot of strange behavior and denials from Intuit and Macrovision/C-Dilla on this matter.

Not only does this stuff take up disk space and spread files all over your system and spy on you, it occupies RAM and causes more disk-thrashing for virtual memory. Why should anyone accept it?

Bottom line: Dump TurboTax and send corporate America a no-I-won't-accept-spyware message. When TurboTax suffers a rapid loss of market share, they'll get the message.